Monday, July 28, 2008

UK's Highly Radicalized Islamic Students


The above is a graphic from the Daily Mail summarizing the troubling results of a study on the attitudes of the UK's Muslims in colleges and universities.
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The study referenced above was carried out by the UK's Centre for Social Cohesion. You can find the full results of the study, the methodology and the raw numbers in their report here. This study tracks completely with an earlier study released by Professor Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, warning that Britain's colleges and universities were heavilly infiltrated by radical Salafists, radical Salafist organizations, and were heavilly influenced by large grants from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim donors. This in fact is a blue print for how Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood have long sought to bring Salafi Islam to dominance in the West. It is occurring in the U.S. also, though not anywhere as effectively and efficiently in the UK whose Muslim population is easilly the most radicalized in Europe.

Here is the summary of the study from the Daily Mail:

Nearly one third of Muslim students believe it can be acceptable to kill in the name of religion, according to a survey published yesterday.

It also found that 40 per cent want to see the introduction of Islamic sharia law in Britain, 40 per cent think it wrong for Muslim men and women to mix freely together, and 33 per cent want to see a worldwide Islamic government based on sharia law.

The findings were described by researchers at the Centre for Social Cohesion think tank, which commissioned the poll, as 'deeply alarming'.

. . . The Centre for Social Cohesion, founded last year to study religion and tolerance, has drawn attention to the extremist influence of Islamic societies and study centres at British universities.

The survey was based on a YouGov poll of 1,400 students, 600 of them Muslims, at 12 universities with influential Islamic societies.

These included eight in London, among them the London School of Economics, Imperial College, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester and Manchester.

It found that a large minority of Muslim students express views that are strongly socially conservative or which suggest they are open to extremist thinking.

While 32 per cent justified killing in the name of religion if the religion was under attack, 60 per cent of students active in Islamic societies did so. Four per cent thought killing to promote religion was permissible.

More than half, 54 per cent, wanted an Islamic political party to stand up for Muslims at Westminster.

. . . Report author Hannah Stuart said: 'These findings are deeply alarming. Students in higher education are the future leaders of their communities, yet significant numbers of them appear to hold beliefs which contravene liberal, democratic values.

'These results are deeply embarrassing for those who have said that there is no extremism in British universities.'

Miss Stewart also said that ministers should be wary about treating university Islamic societies as representative because their members appeared to be more extreme than other Muslim students.

. . . Concerns over extremism among the 90,000 Muslims studying at British universities have grown alongside the spread of radical groups, including the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation which Tony Blair said in 2005 should be banned.

Terrorists who have passed through British universities include Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning vehicle into a Glasgow airport terminal last year, and Jawad Akbar, jailed for life in April 2007 for conspiring to attack shopping malls and nightclubs. He was said to have become involved in militancy while a student at Brunel University.

Read the entire article. Though unmentioned in the above article, the actual report goes into more detail, showing the differences in attitudes between those Muslims studying UK Universties who are members of the Islamic student groups and those who are not. The difference in attitudes are significant.

Possibly the best source for an understanding of the problems with radicalization in the West being driven by Salafists and being opposed by "moderate" Muslims in the West is the debate between devout Muslim reformer Zhudi Jasser and a Salafi Imam that you can find here. If you have not watched it, it perfectly encapsulates the war that is going on today for the heart and soul of Islam.


2 comments:

Jimmy the Dhimmi said...

When you have to say, "Only 6% want their friends executed for leaving Islam...hey, thats pretty good!" There is a problem

Joanne said...

These numbers are very disturbing. I wouldn't say that these students are highly radicalized; I believe they are the mainstream Muslims on the street. People should start getting away from the notion that there are moderate Muslims. Muslims are their religion, Islam, and people better wake up quick because their plans are in place, and they are lying in wait.